Iginite Liverpool – Feb 13th – Igniting Your Imagination

Today I’d like to talk to you about an upcoming event called Ignite Liverpool. Ignite has been going for around 4 years now and I’ve been involved since the start. It’s one of the my favourite events and a source of great pride. In case you don’t know Ignite events are nothing to do with petrol and matches, sorry. Instead they’re supposed to help people share ideas in a quick format and fire up discussion. Each presenter gets a strict 5 minutes and 20 slides. They prepare the slide deck themselves but slides auto advance every 15 seconds. When the last one is done you’ve had your 5 mins and a long shepherd’s crook comes out from behind a curtain to hook your leg and drag you off stage. Ok, so I might have made up last bit but nevertheless your time is over! You’re outta here! As American baseball referees seem to love to shout.

The Ignite format was created by popular Open Source book publisher O’Reilly and has since spread all over the world. Our Liverpool chapter is one of the most active and ass kicking of all, no hint of bias in my assessment here. Events take place every 3 months in the palatial surroundings of LEAF tea shop on Bold St, Liverpool. Entry is free and it usually draws a healthy crowd of around 100 knowledge (and sometimes beer) hungry folks.

We always need people to speak and it’s really not as nerve racking as you might think. I spoke at the first ever Ignite and though I’ve been stuck behind the sound desk since, I WILL talk again. It’s only 5 mins and everyone cares about something enough to talk about it for 5 mins. So what could you talk about? What are you interested in? Come and share it with the world. You don’t have to be a slick professional presenter or have some complex high brow intellectual topic. The crowd is friendly and encouraging, plus we love the bizarre and random talks. Previous topics have included: Zombie Apocalypse Survival 101, Bell Ringing, Wimpy Restaurants, How To Blag Free Stuff By Being A Blogger, Evil PR Companies and Spreading The Love: The Surprising History Of Margarine, almost anything else you can think of.